Mike Felger: Dianna Russini should embrace being ‘notorious’

Photo credit: The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz on YouTube

Mike Felger has an idea for how Dianna Russini can rebuild her career.

The longtime sports radio host appeared on this week’s episode of the Awful Announcing Podcast and, after discussing Boston’s media failures in covering Mike Vrabel, turned his attention to Russini herself and what comes next for her. We’ve covered her path forward at length here, and we’ve made the case that her road back in traditional sports media is essentially closed at this point.

Felger sees it differently. He thinks there’s still a path for her, but not the one she’s apparently hoping for. The way back, in his view, isn’t through contrition or a quiet return to breaking news; it’s through burning the whole thing down and making the point that the sports media world she’s being cast out of isn’t nearly as clean as the people casting her out would like you to believe.

“If I were Dianna Russini, I think her opportunities in the traditional media are going to be slim. So, if I were her, I would embrace being a little notorious, and I would embrace being that girl who comes back and sort of tells it like it is,” he said. “One of the things I would say is, ‘OK, maybe I was literally in bed with someone, but the rest of these guys, they’re figuratively in bed with them. And trust me, much worse than I was. So, yeah, maybe mine was over here, and maybe mine crossed a long, maybe mine was literal, but the figurative banging that’s going on out there, it ain’t much different.'”

“So, she was literally playing footsie with Mike Vrabel in the hot tub,” Felger continued. “How many of these male insiders are figuratively playing footsie with these guys in the hot tub, and how different is it really? It’s different — I’m not saying it’s the same — but please. So, I think there’s a story to tell there if she wanted to tell it, and I think it’d be pretty interesting if she did.”

The sports media world is full of insiders whose relationships with coaches, executives, and agents raise perfectly legitimate questions about whether they are actually reporting or just serving as PR conduits. The difference, of course, is that nobody was caught holding hands in photos with them. Russini resigned from The Athletic in April amid an internal investigation after photos of her with Vrabel at an Arizona resort became public, and the story only got worse from there when the New York Post published photos showing the pair kissing at a bar in New York City in 2020.

Russini has been silent publicly since her defiant resignation statement — aside from deleting her X account — which insisted she would not let the episode define her career.

Felger’s argument is essentially that the silence is the wrong move. If the traditional media door is closed, open a different one and make the point that what she got caught doing isn’t as unique in this business as the coverage suggested. It’s an argument that cuts right at the heart of how the NFL media sausage gets made. The access game has always required give and take between reporters and sources, and the idea that Russini is uniquely guilty of getting too close to someone in the league would be a hard case to make if you’ve spent any time watching how this business actually works.

Russini has given no sign she’s ready to do any of that. Her resignation letter was a PR document, not a manifesto. But if the door to traditional media stays closed — and it’s hard to see who opens it — Felger’s version of events at least offers her something to work with.

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